70 replies to this topic

[AetherMcLoud]

Inspired by such a thread in the mesmer forum, what changes would you like to see in the future to make elementalist more balanced/fun to play/viable?

I'll start:

• Make ride the lightning not auto-target. I tried deactivating auto-targeting but it's such a useful feature, but it killed me more than once with ride the lightning.
  
• Give focus a mobility skill. It's the only weapon we have that doesn't have one, and that's why I never use one.
  
• Give us a buff in base health.
  
• Traits could use a lot of work. I feel that there are only a very tiny amount of ele builds.
  
• Dragon's tooth ground targeted would be awesome.
  
• Air attacks from all the weapons could use a slight damage boost.

[Vihar]

I agree on the base health and the Air DPS.

  I would like a bit more consistency in what skills are slotted where on the bar....like AoE's being the 5 skill, generally...armor and aura's being the 4 skill generally...that sort of thing. It would make the Ele a bit easier to play for a lot of people.

   I would like Churning Earth to be reduced in casting time so that it can actually be used in PVP. Even half a second would be huge.

   I actually think Traits are OK in the whole...except maybe the water Traits...they seem very "meh".

   As a D/D Ele...what gets me killed the most, though....is the skill lag that has been going on......lol....can we fix that first?

[Shock_Treatment]

Cast time reduction to staff skills.  

Base hp increase.

Small dps increase over all skills.

Ground target DT.

That's just me.  

[Myrkur]

Definitely a base HP increase.

Increase damage on all Air #1 skills significantly.  Either by just upping the damage it does (Staff) or speeding up the channel (Scepter).

Add an interrupt to channeled abilities to downskill #2 to give us a way to avoid a stomp similar to all other classes.

Increase base damage on bleeds.

Fix Mist Form and Vapor Form to be invulnerable to condition damage as the tooltip suggests.  Or even better, remove conditions.

Make Tornado form worthy of an ultimate slot.

[AetherMcLoud]

Vihar, on 05 September 2012 - 02:25 PM, said:

   I actually think Traits are OK in the whole...except maybe the water Traits...they seem very "meh".

Overall I just think that we have too much "Do X for Y" traits and too little that are always active. We have a lot of signet, aura and glyph traits, yet without fiery embrace and signets we don't really have that many auras (yet there's what, 6 traits that trigger on auras?).

Myrkur, on 05 September 2012 - 02:55 PM, said:

Add an interrupt to channeled abilities to downskill #2 to give us a way to avoid a stomp similar to all other classes.

I completely forgot about that. The immobilize is so bad it's not even worth casting. I think from the animation it should knock down enemies (and not be channeled anymore).

[Valdimarr_Ironbeard]

Add a petbar or some other way to allow us to control our elementals. I'm tired of seeing the ice elemental randomly use its 6k healing skill (usually when I'm far away from him or almost full hp...), same thing for the air elemental's swiftness / stun and other pet abilities with cd.

Fix blinding flash somehow not having a 900 range when casting it using evasive arcana (it's more something like 300-400).

Fix signet of restoration not restoring energy when you have the arcane energy trait.

Make obsidian flesh & mist form prevent condition damage (or fix tooltip to clearly state invulnerability effects do not prevent condition damage).

Decrease the cd of lightning flash or increase its range.

Make conjured weapons a viable choice. I don't see how they could be worth a skillslot until you're able to swap between them and your attunements at will, as en engineer would do with his kits.

[Vihar]

Myrkur, on 05 September 2012 - 02:55 PM, said:

Definitely a base HP increase.

Increase damage on all Air #1 skills significantly.  Either by just upping the damage it does (Staff) or speeding up the channel (Scepter).

Add an interrupt to channeled abilities to downskill #2 to give us a way to avoid a stomp similar to all other classes.

  Good call.

  I don't even consider using the #2 skill. Totally useless.

  I would prefer some kind of small AE skill. Something like an AE 1 second stun.

[Anlyon Spellrage]

Health is fine, at least imo.

• Fix the Firegrab 'missing-while-moving' bug (along with other single-blast conical casts, Lightning Touch for example)
  
• Increase Firegrab's damage (5k crit on a 45 sec CD? Heartseeker does that mcuh and is spammable) to ~5k base damage. Increase animation time aswell (to offset increase in damage)
  
• Give elementals an 'active' skill, even if its just allowing us to choose when it casts its special spell.
  
• Make Churning Earth actually hold and release.
  
• RtL pathing fix?
  
• Static Field Stuns if you move into it, not just dazing.
  
• Make skills like Dragons Tooth, Shatterstone and Ice Spike all hold and releases that ramp up in damage the long you hold it.
  
• Totally new traits in general.

[goodonezz]

FIX OUR GOD AWFUL JOKE OF A DOWNED STATE

also i think hp would be nice, while not required
the dumb scepter1 bug where channeling animation never stops needs to be fixed
drop time on dragons tooth could be decreased
air attunement focus 5 should be instant imo, would allow for more skilled plays, a cast time on a knockdown is lame
make the staff worth using in spvp, there is so much it seems to be lacking (especially in damage)

[Delvaz]

Allow weapon swapping (staff -> D/D etc) while out of combat, even if it requires a cooldown.  This would prevent me from trying to dig through my bags to do this manually in WvWvW.

[xSkeet]

Delvaz, on 05 September 2012 - 05:07 PM, said:

Allow weapon swapping (staff -> D/D etc) while out of combat, even if it requires a cooldown.  This would prevent me from trying to dig through my bags to do this manually in WvWvW.

We've already been through this...
But, whatever.

Let's see..
RtL pathing & auto-target for sure.
Staff viability in spvp.
Various bugs already stated, especially air scepter 1 channeling..

[Elemental Gearbolt]

Here are my general wishes:

Thief

• Introduce penalty on stealth, right now thieves can load up to 6 stealth on their bar, making the fight more difficult than it is, make it so than they need to wait 5s between each stealth like a necro DS
  
• Reduce damage of heart seeker, yes yes I win but still all these thieves do is spamm this skill non stop

Guardian

• Reduce Guardian defenses, they're a bit over the top, the fight against an offensive guardian is unrealistic they do way more dmg than warriors and thieves combined

Mesmer

• Reduce by a bit the HP of phantasms and illusions, they're supposed to be a form of control mechanic not a copy of the Ranger pet x5

Ranger

• CD on controll skill should be increased reasonably, short-bow rangers just spamm knockback , increase the CD to 20s, control skill should be tacticful no!? so why some classes can just spamm them?

[Elemental Gearbolt]

Anlyon Spellrage, on 05 September 2012 - 04:47 PM, said:

Health is fine, at least imo.

• Fix the Firegrab 'missing-while-moving' bug (along with other single-blast conical casts, Lightning Touch for example)
  
• Increase Firegrab's damage (5k crit on a 45 sec CD? Heartseeker does that mcuh and is spammable) to ~5k base damage. Increase animation time aswell (to offset increase in damage)
  
• Give elementals an 'active' skill, even if its just allowing us to choose when it casts its special spell.
  
• Make Churning Earth actually hold and release.
  
• RtL pathing fix?
  
• Static Field Stuns if you move into it, not just dazing.
  
• Make skills like Dragons Tooth, Shatterstone and Ice Spike all hold and releases that ramp up in damage the long you hold it.
  
• Totally new traits in general.

Ohh * yeah!

Fix that damn ride the lightning, there are huge pathing issues it's retarded, 5 times out of 10 I'll get stuck mid-air and firegrab is indeed idiotic, I'm very happy with churning earth, I can land it 8 times out of 10 even in tournaments with devastating effects, people just need to learn how to use it properly, and then Fire Grab, this skill simply pale in comparison to CE, the damage is too low, the CD too high, the cone path too narrow, I do way more dmg with dragon's breath than Flame Grab kind of stupid really and dragon's breath is way more reliable

[Att3r0]

There are so many ways to buff ele... i personaly would rather like some mechanic tweaks then just all around buff.

As example i dislike flamestrike - it promotes play where you just switch to fire, blow your CDs and then switch away. It would be ok if burning would stack in intensity or DT would do more damage to burning to promote burning importance. Possibly it could be 3 hit chain with just the last one adding burning and having direct damage buffed.

Water - i feel that healing siphons to much from ele survival allowance. Also the healing power scaling is awful - noway to pick it rather then vitality.

More reliable "ranged" damage , i seriously feel that i need to be in melee to do make some serious damage hit.

and all the obvious things like downed state , bug fixes , survival /CC...

[Aetou]

Let's see...

1) Increase HP to the same as Necros
2) Fix down skill #2 so it is useful (Knockdown would be ideal)
3) Dragon's Tooth... make it much faster to drop.  Much, much faster
4) Increase underwater damage significantly - currently it's a joke
5) Some CD tweaks (e.g., 15s Phoenix, Water Trident, Burning Retreat, Geyser)
6) A source of Stability that lasts long enough to stomp somebody and is on a CD shorter than 90s (heck, you could even just reduce Armor of Earth to 60s and most people would still take Mist Form instead.)

[masterloup]

Increase base health.
Replace downed skill 2 with a knockback
Dragon tooth being ground targeted
reduce casting time on staff skills
Reduce casting time on churging earth
Do something about ele's underwater, i don't care what, just do something(mostly increase damage)
More but i gotta go>.>

[Baipass]

The changes I want to see are -Whole new god damn traits and major skill adjustments(fixing some technical issues on the skills,replacing,swapping with new,buffing) all leading to the point where:
You can choose what you want to play - Damage/Support(CC,area heals,boons,control etc) and be actually EFFECTIVE at it. Ele currently is jack of all trades unfortunately you do none viably. No matter how good and versatile you are you can't be viable when nearly every proffesion out there outdamages and is tougher than you. Currently I see the ele only as a support with CC and some are heals & occasional raw damage both in PvP and PvE. That has to change. I was really hyped up when I saw this prof but now I'm just unhappy to see how unviable Anet has made it. I don't regret however being one. Ele is going to be my main to the end I like a challange.
Most of the changes in skills are already mentioned so I am going to add another one:
More viable meteor shower - Not only you jeopardize yourself by not moving in order to cast it but on top you get:
Inconsistent meteors - even if the target is the AoE area there's a chance it won't get hit by the random falling meteros.
Even if the target is hit the damage is not noticable lol. Or if the damage won't get buffed can't we even get a 1x KD the first time any targets been hit. Seriously ele is messed up atm, but will keep playing it.

[T0ken]

AetherMcLoud, on 05 September 2012 - 03:03 PM, said:

I completely forgot about that. The immobilize is so bad it's not even worth casting. I think from the animation it should knock down enemies (and not be channeled anymore).

what? Immobolize might be the worse 2 skill to stop someone from stomping you but so bad its not worth casting?? really? while most of the time i just die when i get downed ive used immobolize plenty of times to prevent a stomp atleast temporarily.Not only that you can get another player killed with immobolize if your not being stomped, imagine a thief getting immobolize against a warrior or something.

[EatThisShoe]

1. Fix all the bugs.

2. Raise damage on water attacks.

3. Add damage to skills which deal no damage like Gust, Gale, Geyser, etc. Especial skills with significant cast times. This should help sustained DPS between bursts without making our burst too strong. Basically other classes deal damage with every weapon skill they have except a few warhorn or shield skills.

4. combine Lightning Strike with either Arc Lightning or Blinding Flash and give us a new skill because two skills that add up to the DPS of one auto attack is just filler.

Valdimarr_Ironbeard, on 05 September 2012 - 03:37 PM, said:

Add a petbar or some other way to allow us to control our elementals. I'm tired of seeing the ice elemental randomly use its 6k healing skill (usually when I'm far away from him or almost full hp...), same thing for the air elemental's swiftness / stun and other pet abilities with cd.

It should be a chain skill, like how necro/guardian/ranger pets become an activation skill after they are summoned. Seems obvious when every other class already does it.

Edited by EatThisShoe, 06 September 2012 - 12:41 AM.

[T0ken]

since i mainly play s/d ill only comment on that weaponset.

shatterstone is absolute garbage. Its instant cast but you cant cast another spell for 2 seconds so its basically a 2 second cast. It was barely worth casting before this limitation. in fact making it a 2 sec cast would actually make it more useful since you could cancel it, as opposed to now where your commited once you drop it down.

arc lightning needs to be buffed as mentioned quite a few times already.

Dust devil needs its damaged increased or something. Blind is good but with a cast time on it you cant use it reactively the dmg is terrible and it moves slow as hell. the only use ive come up for it is when someone else is stomping an opponent you can guess when hes going to use his downed interupt skilll and hit him with the blind but only when you cant get back to air or if blinding flash is on cooldown. thats alot of conditions you need to make it useful.

Churning earth needs a lower cast time or be able to use it on the move. with the cripple it has being able to use it while moving would be pretty useful.

Edited by T0ken, 06 September 2012 - 01:05 AM.

[Athletic]

- Improve dagger mh
- Improve focus
- Earth #5; 6 secs instead of 8 cast time
- Some condition removal in water attunement
- Completely rework underwater skills
- Control of my pets
- Better downed state

Edited by Athletic, 06 September 2012 - 01:41 AM.

[henker]

Elemental Gearbolt, on 05 September 2012 - 05:56 PM, said:

Here are my general wishes:
...
Guardian

• Reduce Guardian defenses, they're a bit over the top, the fight against an offensive guardian is unrealistic they do way more dmg than warriors and thieves combined

...

What?!? More damage than warriors and thieves? that's insane lol

[Elemental Gearbolt]

henker, on 06 September 2012 - 02:30 AM, said:

What?!? More damage than warriors and thieves? that's insane lol

They've got perma retaliation and burning, I have received 8k dmg within 5s, and that dmg just pass through toughness and protection like a hot knife cutting butter...so yeah it's ridicolous

[Cronstintein]

My personal wishlist:

-downskill #2 that will stop a stomp in progress, maybe just move mist to slot 2.
-Teleport range increased to 1200
-Damage boosts needed in so many places...  Dagger should have damage to make up for the closeness required and staff should do more to make up for the long cast times.  (or shrink the cast times)
-Can we redo focus->fire skills please?  These have got to be the worst skills in the game BY FAR.  1sec burn times? Long CDs and short durations make these comically bad.

[Anlyon Spellrage]

Oh and Make auras trigger from max range. I want Frost Aura to chill kiting rangers, and Shocking Aura to stun Engi's.

[AetherMcLoud]

T0ken, on 05 September 2012 - 11:41 PM, said:

what? Immobolize might be the worse 2 skill to stop someone from stomping you but so bad its not worth casting?? really? while most of the time i just die when i get downed ive used immobolize plenty of times to prevent a stomp atleast temporarily.Not only that you can get another player killed with immobolize if your not being stomped, imagine a thief getting immobolize against a warrior or something.

Spamming 1 does more damage than 2, and i play D/D so when I die I'm already in melee range to get stomped.

[dcgregorya]

Scale the damage appropriately.  I get that staff ele fire in WvW and burn spec can put out decent damage but they're both totally niche.  For a class as squishy as it is, it should have MUCH MUCH better single target nukes.  The nukes on an ele with 14k HP pure crit/power are half that of a thief let alone a warrior.

Honestly the trait lines are garbage.  They're all set up to force you into 20+ points down an elemental line and you're taking traits like +10% damage while attuned to X just to get it back to baseline instead of to actually improve your build.  The trait penalties are unneeded considering how poor the DPS of the class is.

Honestly, I've played all 8 classes and even the fabled necro looks like god mode compared to an elementalist.

As it stands btw, I can top points in sPVP but that has nothing to do with anything really.  That's just spamming rock armor and bleeds against newbies too bad to use condition removal - who let me spam bleeds and churn earth on them.

And whats with the tornado and sword elite?  The sword's CD is way way too long for the fact that it is limited in both duration and charges.  And why are the elementals limited in duration?  Flesh golem only goes away when it dies and has an on command attack.

Man, there's so much wrong with this profession - not even getting into things being bugged (like RtL's habit of turning you around unless you turn auto-targeting off).

[AetherMcLoud]

dcgregorya, on 06 September 2012 - 09:18 AM, said:

Scale the damage appropriately.  I get that staff ele fire in WvW and burn spec can put out decent damage but they're both totally niche.  For a class as squishy as it is, it should have MUCH MUCH better single target nukes.  The nukes on an ele with 14k HP pure crit/power are half that of a thief let alone a warrior.

Yeah it's really sad. In a full glasscannon spec with 13-14k health my firegrab crits for 6-8k maximum (and those 8k were with might and on another glasscannon). Meanwhile a warrior with 22k health crits me for 16k...

[Elemental Gearbolt]

Anlyon Spellrage, on 06 September 2012 - 06:08 AM, said:

Oh and Make auras trigger from max range. I want Frost Aura to chill kiting rangers, and Shocking Aura to stun Engi's.

I have confirmed that Frost Aura works on kiting rangers skill except rapid fire, while shocking aura doesn't trigger on ranged enemies for apparent reason

[russ]

Vihar, on 05 September 2012 - 02:25 PM, said:

   As a D/D Ele...what gets me killed the most, though....is the skill lag that has been going on......lol....can we fix that first?

this.